More on my fiction writing

March 25, 2016

Snakebit

As with the Suns arena, the Diamondbacks stadium never would have been built downtown if it weren't for the unfairly reviled Jerry Colangelo. He was the last remaining civic steward who could knock heads and write checks in the tradition of the Phoenix 40.

Other sites were proposed, including on the Glendale fringe and at 40th Street and the Red Mountain Freeway. But Colangelo saw both venues as essential to the revival of the heart of the city. It was telling that with all the old headquarters gone or going, a sports executive was the last man standing. But it was enough and both facilities played pivotal roles in saving downtown.

BOB/Chase Field is not a handsome stadium, looking more like an airplane hanger than Camden Yards, Safeco Field, or Coors Field. It led to the demolition of numerous historic structures in the Warehouse District and Chinatown, including the Arizona Citrus Growers Coop building. On the other hand, a successful archeological dig was undertaken there. And the finished product is convenient to the entire region and located on light rail (WBIYB). Significantly, its air conditioning proved that Major League baseball could succeed in Phoenix.

Now, under Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick, the Diamondbacks are demanding that the county provide $187 million in upgrades — "current and future maintenance obligations" — or the team will seek a way out of its lease and leave.

I have long suspected that Kendrick, and his Suns counterpart Robert Sarver, have longed to depart downtown for the suburbs. Neither has a deep affinity to Phoenix or commitment to the health of downtown. Kendrick was already behind the lavish Spring Training facilities on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community close to north Scottsdale. His wife, Randy, is a major right-wing money figure and both give to Koch causes and the "Goldwater" Institute — stances guaranteed to be anti-city.

In short, then, this is a shot across the county’s bow: We know we have a lease, but we think you should pay untold hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade it or maybe replace it, or else we’ll move, and if you won’t let us move, we’ll sue you. It’s the mother of all nastygrams, and like all such missives, it’s meant less to spell out legal niceties than to intimidate the recipient into talking about ways to make the issue go away. If the public discourse around the Diamondbacks’ stadium demands shifts in coming weeks from “Wait, didn’t we just build them one?” to “How much does the public have to spend to keep the team owners happy?” then you’ll know it has done its job.

This is shameful extortion by a wealthy ownership group.

My gut says that the answer from the county should not be "no," but "hell, no!" Sports oligarchs have successfully gained billions in taxpayer dollars to build their self-serving palaces across America. It's high time cities started refusing to participate in the racket, especially at a time of huge infrastructure needs thanks to decades of tax-cut religion.

Phoenix doesn't have the economy or incomes to support four big-league teams. Maricopa County's 2014 median household income was $53,689 vs. LA County's $55,870, as much as $93,500 in the Bay Area, and $66,870 in Denver. The Suns, D-Backs, Cardinals, and Coyotes have been in a death grapple for years. Only lavish taxpayer subsidies, combined with the associated sprawl hustles in Glendale, have kept the game going as long as it has.

This showed with Major League Baseball. Colangelo persuaded his partners to invest lavishly in the Diamondbacks, his strategy being that if they fielded a championship team the result would be high season-ticket sales and a long-term vibrant franchise. The gambit failed despite winning the 2001 World Series. Colangelo was eased out (with team colors changes to a league lookalike red) and he went to make money — where else — in the short hustle of sprawl.

And yet, my head worries about downtown Phoenix. I can't tell you how many people say to me that the only time they go downtown is to see the Diamondbacks or the Suns. Unlike in Denver, where MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL all play downtown near abundant and growing rail transit, or Seattle with Safeco Field and CenturyLink side-by-side downtown, most Phoenicians have little or no connection to the city's heart.

This has been made much worse by the lack of major center-city headquarters and moneyed stewards, as well as what robust economic activity there is happening out on the fringes or in Tempe (and there relatively far from transit). Made worse by lack of civic connections and self-segregating suburbs. Soon to come: An argument echoing the Braves move from Atlanta to affluent suburban Cobb County "to be closer to our fan base."

Phoenix has already been hurt by the loss of all but one Spring Training team, and the Brewers in Maryvale hanging by a thread. Tourism and leisure are much bigger components of the economy here compared to more diverse peer metros, and Phoenix is hurt if it isn't at the table. The city already suffers from one-third of its population in severe poverty. Phoenix isn't like its peer cities, or even "normal" cities, where pro sports probably brings little economic benefit. It has special vulnerabilities and profound weaknesses.

How badly would the loss of baseball fans hurt downtown? How much would it add pollution that could be mitigated by light rail? Is ASU downtown, the convention center, and the biomedical campus enough of an economic engine? And how does this affect downtown's new-found ability to be the hub of events such as the Super Bowl? Don't expect sports moguls or suburbanites who brag about living in south Chandler (is that supposed to convey some gloating?) to provide the answers.

This is only the opening of another distressing battle to save the city.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

It's not true anymore that folks who live in the suburbs only come downtown for the games. Some people, maybe, but there's a lot of stuff in general going on downtown. The same people who come out for a game in any of the stadiums or arenas drive out of downtown as fast as they drive in. They do lots for the sports owners but not so much for downtown businesses or vitality, short of the parking lots or sports bars.

You can't field bad teams in any sport and expect people to come see them, so the decision to create a businesses just to get sports traffic biz, not a good scenario.

Once again, the Diamondbacks alienate me, a long time baseball fan. When the team opened play in 1998, I enjoyed listening to local radio play by play. Early 2000's was interesting baseball.

Then came Ken Kendricks. He dropped Luis Gonzalez, a perennial favorite of local fans in 2006. Changed team colors in 2007 from the distinctive purple, black, teal and copper colors to red, brown, and black - tried to rename red as sedona red but red is red. 2009 he hired a little league manager. 2010 he abandoned Tucson as spring training site.

Now Kendrick is running stupid once again by talking about dropping the stadium lease. Guess I can stop listening. I planned to go watch a Cardinals - Diamondbacks game end of April but probably not. I do not need to support extortion.

Who will have to take a "bullet" for the rest of us this time?
John Q. Public has to step up and say not hell no but hell no and no fucking way do we tax ourselves again for the benefit of sports moguls.
Chase Field is only 18 yrs old and certainly not out of date.

I just returned from a week in Boston. How old is Fenway Park? It is revered as a civic treasure there. It is located right downtown in what may the most difficult town in America to drive in.

MLB might not be able to pay the obscene salaries to players if they had to provide or even take care of their facilities

I'd be interested in knowing what these "current and future maintenance obligations" are. Skyboxes? Lavish corporate suites? It takes brass (base)balls to engage in such naked extortion. Let the bastards pay for their own place of business, like the rest of us do. Not only should Maricopa County tell them "hell no," they should suggest that the Diamondbacks not let the door hit 'em where the dawg shoulda bit 'em. As for the so called Cactus League, it's become the same surge (scourge?) pricing eight dollar beer gouge as the regular season.

"Now, there’s one small problem with the D-backs threatening to bolt Phoenix: They have a lease that requires them to stay put through 2028, and prohibits them from even talking to other cities until 2024, a la the old Tampa Bay Rays lease. To get around that, the team owners repeatedly cite the need to maintain a “state-of-the-art facility,” something they say the county is failing to do by not spending that $187 million for upgrades to such things as lighting, improved luxury suites and scoreboards, and enhanced video surveillance. The problem with that is that the county doesn’t appear to have actually put a state-of-the-art clause into the Diamondbacks’ lease..."

Seems some people believe the rich before they will believe their gub'ment.

I supported one if my favorite teams today with native locals by attending the ceremonies and festivities of the Yaqui's in Guadalupe. Great dances and rituals and food and people. And old miltant agnostic Cal even attended a Yaqui/Catholic mass. The festival continues through the weekend. Enjoy.
Better than a football game anyday.
Sports lost me when it became PRO. Pro thuggism.

Tom G, You probably also enjoy chasing little white balls around on green imported grass. As I recall I think the first Arizona golf course was a sand lot in Douglas.
I played basket ball in the 50's in gyms so small there were no bleachers and if you touched someone, it was called a "foul". But now we have thugs seeing who can deliver the biggest blows. I will admit I have watched documentaries of Michael Jordon's abilities but then he was an acrobatic ballet athlete that played basketball. And the Yaqui's could have done without europeans and basketball.
And I lived in Arizona when Women's softball was hot.
I will not miss PRO sports.
But how can one survive without fry bread and beans?
Hasta Luego.

This is pretty much what happens in any society, capitalist or otherwise, where culture is confused with popular culture: more resources ( and propaganda effort) flow to the most well-attended entities. In a way, it's democratic, at least until you get to the small percentage of Americans who just don't like to watch the most popular sports. I believe the public should kick in the same amount for sports stadiums as it does for museums, libraries, parks, and other public venues. After that stipend is gone, maybe the team owners should look to the fans to pay for it at the gate. You can argue that sports arenas are critical to keeping downtown alive, and it's civically responsible to support them, but if that's the major draw to a downtown, you still pretty much have a dead, uninteresting downtown, and you still pretty much feel like you've been blackmailed or sold a lemon.
By the way, remember when "Madison Square Garden" drew the rubes from barrio and suburb alike to watch Tito Montez and The Baby Blimp perform Olympic-style feats of athletic prowess?

What's not being reported on is the massive number - $187M?! I've read for "upgrades" and "maintenance and repair" - two very different things. I think the cost to build the thing was in the $300M range.

There have been hush hush rumors for years that the stadium has serious construction defects that may be unrepairable.

At this point, both Chase and, to a lesser extent (because of its frequent programming), USAC have outworn their welcome in downtown. They served their purpose in getting Phoenicians to go downtown again and open their eyes to a city center that may not be Chicago or NYC, but is safe, clean, and filled with other attractions and reasons to come back aside from a ball game.

Both were atrociously designed and overparked, serving as fortresses that kept the public from the blight that is/was the Warehouse District, instead of being catalysts toward its revitalization as should have been the case. The dearth of investment in adjacent areas like Colliers and Jackson Street are fairly strong evidence that those who come to these games/events leave right after. With the City's idiotic Sunburst 'escape' plan in place, and this is all but guaranteed.

Both groups continue to make anti-downtown decisions in spite of keeping their teams there. Sarver demolished some of the last remnants of the SRO hotels that should have served as a transition into the Warehouse District, but is now a parking lot. The Diamondbacks, rather than engage the surrounding cityscape, recently added a "food truck plaza" internal to the stadium and brought in big names like Michael Levy to cater the stadium. These aren't decisions that foster a thriving downtown boosted by the presence of sports fans.

Downtown lacks civic stewards, yes; thus how a building like Circles could be so endangered. Downtown lacks a powerful sector of employers/HQs, yes. But, the dozens of condo and apartment projects nearing completion will infuse the city with the population it has been talking about for over a decade, and for a downtown that is already on the verge of a tipping point due to the investment of the local creative class in some really great and unique businesses, move-in day should make threats of bullies like the DBacks feel pretty empty, IMO.

I have already heard some rumblings - both 'didn't we just pay for the stadium?' and 'if they would field a winning team instead of being such cheapskates they would have better crowds.' Of course most of the local news media is on the Dback owner bandwagon, claiming the county is not holding up their end of the bargain. But the fact remains that according to the original agreement, the team manages the facility and is therefore responsible for upkeep, which is what the $187m tab is for. The county is willing to pay for capital improvements. The team also wants to reduce its rent from $4m a year to $200k a year - I'm sorry, outrageous, considering they pay that to some of their mediocre players.
I've been to games, and watched games on TV in the last two years where there were so many empty seats I'm surprised they didn't try selling them for 1/4 of the price just to get people in the stands. But as long as you field an inferior team, you can't get fans to buy in. You change the team colors, who wants to buy new gear in the "new" colors that look like a quarter of the other teams in baseball? Of course baseball is a business but in the last 5 years they've made a habit of trading away the most popular players (except Goldschmidt) and keeping players who are barely above AAA level.
If they move the team to the suburbs, I won't go. Sorry, I don't live there, and I'm not getting on a freeway to see mostly mediocre baseball.

Most suburbs have learned from the Glendale debacle,so that leaves the Indian Reservations and I don't think they will let the white man screw them again.I watch most of the games I see on TV so hasta luego,D-Backs.

As I recall, a few of the highlights of the Colangelo regime were announcing they were raising the ticket prices on the very first "fan appreciation" day, completely unrealistic attendance estimates, a bunch of deferred money contracts, and devaluing the original investors' shares.

LoL- the people are appallingly stupid. This is the same Kendrick bunch that was just showing off their multimillion dollar baseball card collection, while boasting of their connections to dark money.

They are welfare queens, pure and simple, and any other thought proves you must be dreaming- I am talking to you inphx.

As for Jerry, phfffft. What they did as the ownership group was pathetic- they should have kept their foot on the gas, and gone for full seats instead of "more revenue from season tix holders".

They failed elementary economics, because their short term considerations wrecked their long term financial ability.

The stadium negotiation is simply extortion, and should be rebuffed.

Go ahead, attempt to get the SRP tribe to borrow for $800 million to build a stadium, uh no. Wait until the Tourism and Sports Authority goes bust, then it all blows into dust.

It all just makes me tired. I have not been to a d-backs game in years, and now the same quick buck demand pricing bushwa is ruining spring training. It will be interesting what they blame next year for the decline in the 2017 attendance. It will be because of pricing.

Sports in America is a badly run big business dependent on corporate welfare.

Eff 'em.

So much of America deserves Trump, so we can get our fall over faster.

CRAFTY BUSINESS AND POLITCIANS? My Ass. Come on guys they are just outright criminals. These guys just get richer and richer while a guy robbing a market for 50 bucks gets 10 years in prison. In both cases the general public pays the costs. It's time for some rich financial folks to go to jail and pay for thier own incarceration. Madoff was just the tip of the criminal financial wall street world.

And I'm for making Jefferson to I-17 and 7th Street to Central part Desert Botanical garden, part organic growing fields and part open reptile park with lite rail throught so us humans can walk and ride around while viewing rattle snakes basking in the sun next to a Sajuaro.

And what's wrong with a tractor pull contest. I enjoyed watching those old one lunge John Deere's out pull the Cases and FarmAlls.

INPHX apparently believes government agencies appear out of nowhere. Another example of magical thinking from the political right in Arizona.

As INPHX writes, government should not be funding professional sports stadiums at all. The takers, AKA crafty businesspersons, won't let that happen. More cuts to education and healthcare seem to be no problem however for the Republican Arizona Legislators and Governor.

70% of the public is against the county funding the upgrades, according to PBJ.

There is a ton of positive press out there on downtown Phoenix right now, and one only needs to take a walk between McDowell and Fillmore, 7th Street to 7th Avenue (+ Grand Avenue) to see that the investment is happening where the remnants of a breathing city remained. If they let you through without swiping a SunCard first, walk past the ASU sell-out district between Fillmore and Van Buren, and you'll find that the only areas with any sign of $ are - again - the most urban: Monroe and Adams, two of the best blocks left in all of downtown, are experiencing a renaissance, while the Warehouse District is attracting a ton of interest from IT, tech, and creative businesses for the first time.

111W Monroe has gone from Class B wasteland to nearly fully occupied with well-paying STEM jobs, and a 100% leased ground floor line-up of non F/B retail. US Bank is getting a marketplace similar to the Union @ Biltmore, while the Renaissance Hotel is getting a facelift that - while it won't bring back the glory of the original Adams Hotel - will actually engage the street, modernize the cheese grater facade, and is all but 1,000 square feet leased.

While I lament the conversion of the entire Warehouse District into one that will shut its doors at 5pm (as I think it has much more potential than that to be a mix of uses), after sitting empty since its agricultural peak, I can't complain about a forward-thinking medical center opening in the Sun Merc, a Dental Training Institute bringing guests in from around the country every month at the old Jackson's, Galvanize - a school for web developers - joining WebPT in its renovated space on Grant...

Meanwhile, what exactly is happening in and around the stadium and arena? ::crickets::

I was a huge sports fan growing up but the older I get the less interested I find myself. It's all so commercial, and incredibly expensive. It used to be affordable entertainment, and now it is a luxury good.

There is, simply put, too much money in it.

Despite all of the above, the sports themselves are still interesting to watch, but it's hard to filter out all the dross and drama and enjoy the product. I guess you just have to enjoy the moment and not get caught up in anything else.

Honestly, I kind of think cities may be better off without pro sports. You can still watch what you want on television, but you don't have to subsidize it, you avoid all the local drama, and (ideally) your city's time and energy are focused on more worthwhile pursuits.

Cal !!!
I'm still fired up about the Yaqui Festivities in
Guadalupe!!!! Especially since across the street from Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Guadalupe is the San Diego Bay Restaurant ( Mexican Seafood to die for) !!!!

Tom G. I got sick last time I ate there.
However Nash the 80 plus year old redheaded Mexican Mormon barber still has his barbershop by the restaurant and is still lifting weights in his barbershop when it's slow.

PS we had a good time at the Yaqui festivities and my law enforcement old Buddy from my PPD and DEA days was there as he is a Yaqui native of Guadalupe, AZ. And I attended Mass in the old church which is of historical interest to me and my friends.

In the era of partnership/syndicate team ownership, Kendricks is only doing what is expected of him by the partners. When there is talk going on about possibly finding a new location for the Coyotes, or even a new Suns facility, why wouldn't DBacks ownership want to make sure they get in on the gravy train? They'd be dumb not to. As always, the real culprit here is the various levels of city and county government who continually invite this sort of treatment because, like a girl who can't protect her virtue, they can't say "No".